Anticipation

Sybbie crouches below the dragonfly shepherd’s hook planted firmly in the frozen ground on the ridge to the west, watching as the red-capped plastic bird feeder dangles in the chilly wind. Her whiskered expression shifts from concentration to hope, as if one of her winged quarries will simply drop from the breakfast buffet into her mouth. Fortunately, for the fat cardinal busily cherry-picking at the sunflower seeds, his hunger hasn’t distracted him from keeping an eye on the furry ground below. He eats his fill and flies off. Sybbie shrugs her shoulders, scouts out the prospects at the other feeding stations along that same western ridge, and sighs into the memory of dry food waiting in a warmer place by the kitchen stove. Friday’s 7” snowfall is now a melting shell of its former self, and I smile as Sybbie picks her way across the yard to the porch, making sure to place her paws exactly in the prints she made two days ago in her first attempt to dine al fresco. I open the screen door to let her in.

The entire scene takes place at the start of the third day of February, where we can almost see spring’s fingers curling onto the edge of our hope and grabbing hold, to pull itself up and over into our winter-weary souls. Last week, I stood in the middle of a polar vortex as the truck’s engine roared to life almost defiantly in the -28 degree air. Today, it’s supposed to get up to 51 degrees. Sybbie’s footprints will be harder to find by the time the sun goes down.

You’ve heard my position on complaining about the weather, so I’ll be brief: it’s not about us. I also know full well the joy of un-hunching our shoulders, after weeks of being locked into position against the cold, to relax into the first “no jacket needed” day of spring (I know people who would sacrifice limbs and almost children for that, though I’m grateful they don’t. A good change of season needs both to be fully enjoyed and appreciated). But in the end, nature will do as it pleases, and we’ll do it better if we relax into all of it as best we can. I watch the birds at the feeder, and Sybbie below it, for guidance. They work with it.

In the meantime, I glance at the weather app predictions on my phone, and trust that I have more than enough layers to put on and take off as the temperatures dictate. I don’t mind. I have plenty to keep my hands and brain busy if I choose to stay inside—there are journals to be bound, granola to make (a new recipe this just this morning: Dark Chocolate Ancho Chili Cinnamon, with toasted pumpkin seeds. See? You’ve forgotten the melting snow already). Two dear friends came over for cooking and lunch yesterday, and we walked down the path past the sweat lodge, taking a left into the meadow. We came across tracks in the snow and gave our best Animal Planet explanations about who made them. One thing we know—there’s a rabbit out there who is an Olympic-trained jumper. Such distance between each long-footed impression! The weight of my boots reminds me of my place in the Big Picture as I leave a trail of size 6.5 close-together tread marks in the snow. Even with the warmer temperatures this week, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of it, so I’ll keep those 6.5 size boots close to the front door for a while longer.

After our friends left, I meandered down to the bridge, and looked past the railings to see two elongated melted spots where the thin ice was giving way to the creek’s insistent movement. It was like peering down into a white-framed window, where an entirely different world was arranging itself and getting on with it. Barley audible, I watched as gallon after gallon of icy water rushed onward beneath the layer of unmarked snow-cover, enchanted. Branches from the black walnuts stretched across the banks trying to touch each other, and I hoped the warming trend this week wouldn't trick them into budding too soon. But hey, they’re trees and know far more than I do about such things.

I gave the scene one more achingly grateful gaze, and left them all to it. Rushing creek water, smart cardinals, and leaping meadow rabbits are all the signs of a longed-for spring I need today. It will come, and I’ll be ready.

At Last, I Get to Wear My Boots

The first snow of the season is thick on the ground, and winter is finally behaving like it should. I make no apologies for loving every flake, every drift, every schlufffff sound my boots make as I walk to the rabbit hutches to replace their frozen water bottles with thawed ones, and scoop the little green feed pellets they love so much into their makeshift dishes (vintage mid-century modern ashtrays, a couple of thrift store cereal bowls abandoned by the sets they once belonged to). I’m wearing my headlamp but really don't need it; the glow from the vast expanse of snowfall beneath my feet offers plenty of light for these pre-dawn chores.

It’s glorious, this weather, this day.

Every tree branch, fairy garden prop, handmade lawn art sculpture, bottle tree, birdfeeder and gourd birdhouse wears a pristine and tall white snow-wool cap, waiting for the photo shoot people to arrive (they’re not coming, but that doesn’t matter). The weather-guessers predicted “up to 9 inches”, and offered the usual snow-to-rain equivalents data, and I rarely find that comparison interesting or helpful. I’d rather just enjoy the snow as snow, and not the torrential disaster it might have been if the red line on the thermometer was taller. Can’t we live in the present, people? I’ll try to be more understanding.

It’s entertaining to watch our newest egg layers, six sweet little Cuckoo Marans, stretch their naked yellow feet to reach past the doorway of the coop, gingerly dipping a toe (claw? talon?) into the fluff of white in the run where their feeder rests, ready for breakfast. It’s their first snow, so of course they’re cautious, and maybe a bit put off, mixed with mild curiosity. But when the older girls, our Golden Comets, barrel past them, pushing and shoving because they’ve seen the feeder, they know it’s time to eat and that’s all that matters, a would-be chicken “first snow” Hallmark moment dissolves into survival of the poultry fittest, and both varieties get about the business of establishing a hungry pecking order that will carry on until dusk. It’s all about the food for these ladies, and I envy them. My life is so full of other trivia. To be focused on food…ahh…

I bought a half-dozen flannel shirts from a few local Goodwills in the past couple of weeks, fascinated and eager to try fading them in a forced way—bleach, water and vinegar, and lots of hot water. Haven’t done it yet, and today, I’ve claimed my favorite one, a lovely blue/white plaid pattern with buttons at the cuff that allow me to adjust the fit at my wrists, to keep me warm over my other favorite shirt (a “Silent Weekend” jersey, purchased for the occasion of gathering with Deaf and hearing folks for a weekend of American Sign Language and camping, back when I was a student in the ASL/Deaf Studies program at Columbus State Community College). On top of these two layers, I add a gray OSU hooded sweatshirt, and then one of Patrick’s lumberjack jackets, a red Abercrombie & Fitch ski hat (another Goodwill find) and now I’m ready to take the trash to my truck, only eight feet from the porch. Overdressed, perhaps, but, I usually get curious beyond loading the truck bed on these short jaunts, and find myself down by the bridge, filling my mind and eyes with the paradox of rushing icy creek water, framed by snow frosting on the banks. I stand there, trying to receive a lovely mix of emotions rising to the surface—gratefulness, the ache of witnessing such beauty before me, delight, and some wincing regret at ever having to continue down the driveway to go to work, or the grocery store. I want to stay here uninterrupted by such folly. Forever. Extra layers of clothing give me the gift of remaining entranced and captivated by my surroundings without hunching my shoulders against the cold.

I know it will melt someday. Until then, I drink in the images as if I won’t wake up tomorrow to see them, and impulsively fling my arms open wide to match my grin.

No apologies for liking winter. Not a one.

Deep Autumn

We’re at that spot in the season where “Naked Acres” is living up to its name.

I walk the fields this morning, after a far-too-long absence, and tree limbs are bare, their leafy clothing laying in mostly tidy circles around the base of their trunks, rings of fading color that give one the idea of where Christmas tree skirts were first imagined. The woods reveal their secrets, carefully hidden since June busted out all over with shades of green not found in any Crayola box. Now, mid-November, I can see where the land rises and shallows out, where the swampy puddles thick with those fallen, faded leaves and soil sit in reflective stillness, and wash out the deer tracks I was following. My late-August melancholy has moved into a cozy first-snow anticipation (not the dusting we had week before last, but a thick white icing that holds my footprints), and a renewed gratitude for warm socks and waterproof boots that only surfaces this time of year.

All seasons are beautiful, no matter how the weather may inconvenience our ability to experience them comfortably. It’s not about me. It never has been. A woolly gray blanket of sky, a stiff and cleansing north wind, and the soft clacking of chilled-to-the-bone tree branches are gorgeous all by themselves. If I didn’t exist at all, they still would. I take my place in the scheme of things easily, and without disappointment.

As I made my way back from the woods toward the house, I checked on a few things—the old turkey pen, which we plan to repair and transform into next year’s meat chicken house, complete with an open, high-fenced run where they can, well, run in all directions until the chicken wire re-directs them. I tidied up this year’s empty chicken pens, put the detachable corrugated roofing on top of the sturdiest one and bungeed it down hopefully, against those January north winds. The day before Thanksgiving, Patrick moved both pens, with chickens still in them, all the way from the field behind the house, down the hill to one of the egg-layer coops—a Herculean feat that I wish I could have witnessed (I was at work, moving less formidable piles of paper). He made half a dozen of these pens as our meat chicken enterprise grew, so that we could pasture our birds comfortably and safely, moving them and the pens around on 3+ acres of grassy field. The pens are open-bottomed, about 2 1/2’ tall, and wrapped in chicken wire. We cover them with a thick corrugated plastic roof panel that we can remove to replenish their feed and water. When it’s time to relocate the chicks, we remove the roof panels, step inside the pen, and grab hold of the top frame, lifting it just a couple of inches off the ground, and gently nudge the chicks along to their new section of fresh grass. It’s slow and careful work, with much flapping of wings at our feet, and it feels like we’re wearing the clumsiest of wood-and-wire skirts above our ankles, leading the birds in some weird sort of poultry dance. I wonder what we look like…

One of the chicks escaped in spite of Patrick’s slow and careful pace, and I found her this morning, having taken refuge in the branches of the willow tree that died in the summer’s barn fire, and now lay patiently waiting to be turned into sweat wood. She pecked here and there at the ground where the pens used to be, and wondered where all her friends had gone. I followed her to the edge of the thickest cluster of willow branches and gathered her up, crooning that she’d soon be reunited with her pals as I carried her down the driveway hill to the old cinder block coop. They seemed happy to see her, and eager to hear tales of her harrowing survival in the un-penned wilderness.

A pale sun is now making its way across the sky, and I finish up my morning chores of feeding and watering the egg-layers (a Speckled Sussex sneaks out between my feet as the others shove and crowd each other around the feed tray), and raking up sopping wet leaves that have collected by the back door to the mud room. I’ve got a list of indoor projects that I’ll get to after breakfast. But I’ll be taking images of this morning’s walk in the door with me, fully and deeply aware that it’s going to keep getting darker until that quiet moment in late December, when the solstice brings us the gift of incremental light, one frozen day at a time.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Make Something

How’s this for a book title: Losing Teeth, Saving Face: Conquering Dental Anxiety

Or this one: Clothing Naked Emperors: Surviving Middle Management

Stuff like this comes to me unbidden, usually while I’m driving, and it’s neither practical nor safe to write it down, steering with one knee while I look for a pen. But when I reach wherever it is I’m going, I do jot a few into a small flip-pad I keep in the console between the front seats, or better yet, I record them on my phone. Gotta love those little computers in our pockets.

At home, I have as many blank journals as filled ones. I suppose I collect them, but not as bookshelf decorations. I really do want to write in them. Someday. For now, they hold a place of prominent promise on my book shelves, and give me encouragement daily. Not even the vitamins I take can do that.

I cherish how my life is filled with opportunities to create something that hasn’t existed before. And I think it’s wonderfully reckless to imagine giving into every creative impulse as it comes, to the exclusion of work, food, and almost bathing (this would be a difficult one to ignore—I love how I feel after a shower). But alas, I park most ideas in a secure mental holding pen until that elusive “later” comes along, and then spend at least an hour looking for them. Is this what it’s like to live an artist’s life? Geez, I hope not. But if it is, I suppose I’ll put on my big girl smock and get on with it. Life is too short NOT to create, and lately, I’m feeling my purpose is to help folks—myself included—rescue the word “creativity” itself from the narrow realm of arts and crafts.

I facilitate conversations about creativity, and when I ask people if they consider themselves creative, there’s a reluctance in the room that makes it necessary for the discussion to move forward toward reassurance. It’s not whether we’re creative, but how. And boy, do I mean HOW!

Being creative looks like this:

Planning your day. Making breakfast (or lunch, or any meal). Finishing the question “what if…?” Replacing the not-so-jazzy black buttons on a chunky warm sweater with really cool hand-made ceramic ones you found at a local shop on a chilly Saturday afternoon. Writing a tender expression of gratitude in response to someone else’s tender expression of sympathy. Rearranging your living room because you were just bored with the recliner always being by the door to the kitchen. Working with your accountant to prepare your taxes. Looking on Pinterest for photos of Thanksgiving table decor ideas, and then deciding to keep it simpler than that. Making your first quilt or your fiftieth one. Turning a Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie Mix box into a handmade journal. And selecting what color nail polish you want to see on your toes for the next couple of weeks. I think you see where this is going.

I’m certainly not the first and only person out there proposing a wider interpretation of the word and the concept. I’m happy nonetheless to join their cheerful chorus and add more chairs at the table of inclusion where creativity is concerned. And I sit patiently, in love, while the reluctant among us push away whatever is holding them back from claiming their divine birthright, whether it’s shame, or incessant comparison to others, or fatigue.

You see, dear ones, our relationships with others need us to own our creativity. So do our workplaces, our brief and important transactions with bankers and healthcare providers and the person ringing up our groceries, and the discussions at our town hall meetings. Thankfully, creativity doesn’t require a rigid time frame or supplies (like paints and yarn). It’s ready-to-hand in our words, our inner posture of compassion, and our incredible brains. For me, the challenge is more about sorting all that out and not becoming too overwhelmed at the depth and breadth of choice that I live in each moment. I can handle that, though. Bring it.

The compelling urge to do, or be, or bring something into existence is powerful, bubbling expectantly deep within us and also close to the surface. It’s once again reckless, and now also liberating, to let ourselves be carried away by creativity’s capable, enduring flow. Will you let go? Will do allow yourself to own what’s already yours?

Meanwhile, other book titles I’ve played with:

Leave the Titanic Where It Is: Getting Past Your Family’s Dysfunction

Underachievement As a Self-care Strategy

Couldn’t We All Just Live on Chocolate?

Figuring Out the Real Point of Groundhogs

Waking Up Laughing: Life With Patrick

What could those stories look like? What if I picked just one today, and started writing? Where would I end up?

Somewhere fun, I know. Come with me?